Krauthammer: Obama's Amnesty Move Impeachable

On Tuesday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer offered his thoughts on the merits of impeachment should President Barack Obama unilaterally pursue amnesty for 5 to 6 million illegal immigrants here, as the president has suggested in the past.

Krauthammer explained the action would be an impeachable offense, but said he would be against it because of its political consequences.

Partial transcript as follows:

KRAUTHAMMER: Look, this clearly is a concoction of Democrats. It shows how desperate they are. They know mid- terms are coming up. They know that in 1998 the party was saved, the sixth year of the administration, it was saved by impeachment, overreaching on impeachment by Republicans. And this is a good issue. It’s a good way to raise money.

But I like Boehner’s contempt, sort of the tone, the sneering tone he had about all of this. It’s like Harry Reid saying, look, a couple of years ago he had been told that Romney hadn’t paid any taxes, you know, as a rumor.

There’s only one real thing here, and that is that Obama is said to, or there are reports from the White House, that he’s going to do something by executive order about immigration. If he were to do something like legalize, say half, which is what’s been talked about, huge numbers of illegal immigrants, to do it by executive order, which would be clearly lawless and would be the biggest domestic overreach of a president in memory, it would be an impeachable offense. I would be 100 percent against impeachment because it’s political suicide, but it really would be the basis for that.

That’s what I think the White House may actually be softening people up for, an executive order that reaches impeachable offense, but it’s a way of, it’s like a preemptive strike.